rot
by Self-Inflicted Insanity
Summary: (Spin-off of "ash", diverging at chapter xviii.) Light and Lawliet are dead, but somehow ended up in the Shinigami Realm. Light appears to be trying to trick Shinigami out of their Death Notes, Lawliet appears to be doing nothing to stop him, and none of it is probably true. But some of it might be. (Either way, though, they certainly aren't bored anymore.)
1. chapter xviii: uncertainty

**an:** This is a spin-off of my story _ash_ (which is a sequel to my story _ink_ ), branching after "chapter xviii: uncertainty" and then going in a different direction from there. I'm reposting that chapter at the beginning of this one as a reference point. If you haven't read the first seventeen chapters of _ash_ that come before this, then this story probably won't make much sense.

In summary, though: In _ink_ Light is locked in solitary confinement, goes insane and dies; and then in _ash_ Light and Lawliet, both dead, wander aimlessly around somewhere that may or may not be the Shinigami Realm, talk to each other without ever actually saying much of anything, and eventually come to a kind of understanding/reconciliation.

In this AU of that, though, they're definitely in the Shinigami Realm, and they run across some of the Death Gods that dwell there.

This changes things.

* * *

 **uncertainty**

There was a large, jagged rock jutting out of the ground.

Light picked up a skull, tossed it once into the air, and then threw it at the rock as hard as he could.

Shards of bone flew in every direction.

Lawliet dropped down into a crouch, watching the ivory slivers pass over his head. 'What was that for, Kira?'

'We're not actually dead,' said Light, quietly, pulling a splinter of bone out of his cheek and glancing at it dismissively. 'Are we?'

'We're not alive,' said Lawliet, watching Light drop the bloodless shard to the ground.

Light touched a hand to his cheek, checking for a wound that wasn't there. 'But we still exist.'

'Our bodies are rotting in the ground,' pointed out Lawliet.

'But not our minds,' said Light. He gestured between them. 'Not whatever these are.'

Hands shifting from his knees, Lawliet stood. 'We're not lost, Kira.' He slipped his hands into his pockets. 'There's no path that leads back.'

Light tilted his head. 'Who said anything about needing a path?'

Lawliet looked at him, eyes dark. 'There's nobody to bargain with.'

Light's bangs hid his eyes. 'There are Shinigami, aren't there?'

'Shinigami take lives,' said Lawliet. 'They don't return them.'

'No,' said Light, turning to meet his gaze, bangs brushing aside and eyes glinting. 'They steal lives and redistribute them.' Light clasped his hands behind his head, turning his gaze upwards. 'They would be concerned, then, if too many human lives were being taken by other humans, would they not? They need a steady supply to keep on existing, after all. It would be concerning if anything were to threaten that.'

A hand slipped from its pocket, thumb resting against Lawliet's lip. 'That would require an awful lot of killing.' His eyes were black and unblinking.

'It would,' agreed Light, blandly, watching the ash fall.

'I cannot allow Kira to steal a Death Note and continue killing people,' said Lawliet.

Light closed his eyes and let out a breathless sigh, dropping his arms to his sides. 'It really is boring here, isn't it?' He turned away, hands sliding into his pockets, eyes slipping open and staring at nothing. 'I wonder how the Shinigami stand it.'

Lawliet watched him, biting at his thumb.

 _What are you planning, Kira?_


	2. chapter xix: gratitude

**gratitude  
**

On the other side of the jagged rock were a couple rusty chains stretching between the stone and the ground, seeming to serve absolutely no purpose.

'What would you do if we came across some Shinigami, L?' asked Light curiously, brushing his fingers over the metal links. The rust came off dark-red on his fingers.

Lawliet looked at him with blank black eyes. 'Turn around and walk in the other direction.'

'L,' said Light, tilting his head to look at him. 'I didn't ask what you would want me to do if we came across some Shinigami.' His eyelids lowered. 'I asked what you would do.'

Lawliet stared at him for a few moments, then looked away, gaze tracing along the rusted chains as his thumb rubbed over his lip. 'I have some questions I'd be interested to see if they could give me answers to.'

'An interrogation, then,' said Light.

Lawliet glanced at him again, thumb at the corner of his lips and warping the line of his mouth. 'I don't think one can interrogate a Shinigami.'

'One couldn't threaten a Shinigami, certainly,' agreed Light, meeting Lawliet's gaze. His eyes glinted. 'But if anyone is aware of the fact that interrogations don't require threats, it would be you, L.' The skin around his eyes relaxed, then, and his lips curved upwards. 'Still, I could make it easier for you to get the answers you want.'

Lawliet's thumb lowered from his mouth, his eyes dark and flat. 'Don't pretend to be magnanimous, Kira. It doesn't suit you.'

'It does when it suits my own ends,' said Light, his smile too kind for his words.

'It's too bad I couldn't get you to admit that while we were alive,' mused Lawliet.

Light let out an easy laugh. 'Indeed.'

'We don't even know that we will encounter any Shinigami, Kira,' said Lawliet,

'You can't tell me that you're not also so bored that you hope we do, and are planning for the possibility,' said Light as he turned away, clasping his hands behind his head and looking upwards, gazing into the mist-filled emptiness above them that wasn't really sky. 'After all, it's not like there's anything else to plan for.'

'You sure do love to talk, Kira,' said Lawliet.

Light tilted his head just enough to look at Lawliet out of the corner of his eye through the triangular space formed by his left arm. 'But you love to listen, do you not, L? You enjoy trying to figure out what I plan to do.'

Lawliet shifted his gaze upwards, hands remaining in his pockets. 'Kira is, admittedly, making death a more interesting experience for me,' he said, after a pause, glancing back at Light.

Light straightened his head, no longer looking at him. 'You are welcome.'

'I never thanked you,' pointed out Lawliet.

Light's arms blocked his face from view, but there was a smirk evident in his voice when he said, 'You don't need to.'


	3. chapter xx: binds

**binds**

Light was still staring up at the mist-laden void above them, smile playing over his lips and looking, for once, almost genuine.

 _Your demeanor has changed, Kira,_ Lawliet thought, watching him. _And there was something about the way you were talking about Shinigami…_

'You found something that makes you certain that Shinigami do exist here,' he realized.

Light turned his head to look at him, smile sharpening. He lowered his arms and reached one hand into his pocket, taking out something gray and misshapen, tossing it to Lawliet. 'Explain that to me, L.'

Lawliet caught the object between his thumb and forefinger. It was an apple core, gray and dehydrated, but with unmistakable teeth marks.

'I found it on the ground,' said Light.

Lawliet held the apple core before his face, carefully by the stem, staring at it. 'Shinigami love apples, huh.'

'Well, I don't know about the rest of them, but Ryuk does, at least,' said Light, and shrugged, but his eyes, though still a shade of sienna, were not burnt but burning. 'We're going that way.' He gestured to where the crags grew more frequent, but his gaze remained on Lawliet, corner of his lips tugged upwards. 'Any complaints, L?'

'No,' said Lawliet, dark eyes glancing at Light from around the remains of shriveled apple. 'But it's interesting that Kira skipped first-person singular and jumped straight to first-person plural.'

Light laughed. 'Like you'd actually let me go alone, L. After all,' he turned, starting to walk away, 'you do seem to enjoy chaining yourself to me.'


	4. chapter xxi: uneasiness

**uneasiness**

The mists had retreated from the ground, the emptiness opened up over their heads, dark covering of clouds far above them like the high ceiling of a grand cavern. The light that filtered through caught on Light's smile, the way it actually lit up his eyes.

'It's disquieting when Kira smiles like that,' remarked Lawliet, glancing over at him as they walked. There was a buoyancy in Light's step.

'And here I thought the great L wouldn't unsettle so easily,' said Light, turning the full effect of his excited smile on Lawliet, a child on the way to the confectionery.

'You thought wrong,' said Lawliet, thumb at his lips and dark eyes wide. He turned his attention back to where they were walking. 'I'm actually a very anxious person.'

'And yet, despite that, you became a successful detective,' smiled Light, even as he turned his gaze away as well, eyes following the rusted chains draping from the crags jutting out of the ground around them.

'Wrong again, Kira,' said Lawliet, thumb sliding over his lower lip. 'It's actually because of my disquietude that I became a successful detective.'

Light's smile never faltered. 'So why am I smiling, L?'

'Because Kira is quite the optimist,' answered Lawliet, glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes.

Light laughed, the sound for once neither empty nor bitter. 'That's obvious, L.' The gleam in his eyes was oddly warm. Too warm—warmer than was capable of their lifeless forms. 'Did it really take you this long to figure that out?'

'Even though you've yet to make the first move, you're still convinced that your victory is inevitable,' said Lawliet.

Light seemed to have acquired an immutable feeling of jubilation, and Lawliet's words seemed to please him. 'Does that frighten you, L?'

'It amuses me,' said Lawliet, thumb pressing at the corner of his mouth. 'If you're convinced that you'll win, then it means you're convinced that what you're planning is something that I either can't prevent… or won't want to.'

Light's expression was much too warm when he looked over. 'You say you're amused, L, but I don't see you smiling.'

Lawliet lifted the corners of his lips. 'How about now?'

Light's smile disappeared for a moment, and he blinked. ''Disquieting' is a good word for that expression on you,' he remarked. His smile returned. 'If you wanted your fake smiles to be convincing, L, you should've practiced more in front of a mirror.'

Lawliet let the corners of his lips return to neutral. 'I never liked mirrors.'

'I could tell,' said Light.

'Touché,' said Lawliet, thumb returning to his lips.

Light grinned at him. 'Fifteen love.'

'Has the game begun, then?' asked Lawliet, nibbling at his fingernail.

'It's about to.' Light laughed, delighted, coming to a stop as Lawliet turned to look at him.

Light smiled and spread his arms, eyes shining. 'Just try and stop me, L.'

Lawliet bit at his thumb. 'Okay.' He lowered his hand, eyes black and unreadable. 'Sounds like fun.'


	5. chapter xxii: deviousness

**deviousness**

They stood at the top of a raise, gazing down at the land below, the three Shinigami sitting in a small circle at the base of a dark, chain-draped crag. They were gray, decayed-looking beings, mummy wrappings and skulls and old feather headdresses.

'So you were right,' said Lawliet with wide, dark eyes, edges of his teeth pressed into the pad of his thumb and adding a lisp to his words. 'There are indeed Shinigami.'

'It seems so,' agreed Light, turning to him with a smile; child at the candy parlor. 'Let's go trick them out of their Death Notes, and maybe some valuable information as well.'

Lawliet removed his thumb from his mouth. 'If Kira thinks I'm going to let him possess another Death Note and continue his genocide, he is sadly mistaken.'

'What are you talking about, L?' laughed Light, like bells. 'Whoever said I actually plan to use any of the Death Notes?'

'Why ever else would you need a Death Note if not to kill, Kira?' pointed out Lawliet, hands in his pockets, hair obscuring his face, dark bags beneath unblinking eyes. 'Killing is all they're good for.'

'But we'll be saving lives, won't we?' said Light, meeting his gaze, eyes with the roundness of innocence, idealism, rectitude. 'Shinigami kill humans indiscriminately for their own personal gain, paying no attention to whether those they kill are good or bad.' He clenched a fist determinedly, saccharine sincerity dripping from every word. 'If we take their abilities to kill from them, they won't be able to take any more innocent lives.'

Lawliet stared at him for a long moment. 'If you take their Death Notes from them, the Shinigami will die,' he said finally.

'Eventually,' said Light. He shook his head, hair brushing across his face. 'But it's not like they're doing anything worthwhile with their lives, are they? Who cares if a God of Death dies?' He stepped closer to Lawliet, reached out and grasped thin shoulders through white fabric, met dark eyes intently. 'We could save people, L. Real, actual people! People with jobs and families and contributions to a civil society.'

Lawliet just looked at him. 'You wave justice like a flag, Kira, but the allegiance you swear to it is a lie.'

The corner of Light's lips curled, eyes narrowing, and he let go of Lawliet's shoulders, taking a step back. 'Such an elaborate metaphor, L. It's unlike you.'

'Technically it's a simile,' pointed out Lawliet,

'Heh.' Light looked at him through his hair, eyes glinting. 'As long as you don't start decaying on me, L.'

Lawliet tilted his head. 'It almost sounds as if Kira cares.'

Light shrugged, turning away. 'You're making death a more interesting experience for me. And besides,' he gestured at the Shinigami below them, 'I may need your help figuring out how to cheat at their gambling game.'

Lawliet looked at him, eyes dark and unblinking, resting the side of his thumb against his lower lip. 'If it were poker, you would surely win.'

'Poker is a game of strategy,' said Light. 'I'm sure you're not bad yourself.'

'I've never played,' said Lawliet.

'Really?' said Light, lips quirking. 'You'd catch on quickly.' He started walking down the slope towards the Shnigami. 'I hope this game of theirs proves just as easy to figure out.'

Lawliet fell into step beside and just slightly behind him. 'If it's a game of pure chance, there might not be much that you can do, Kira.'

'Do you think there's such thing as a game of pure chance, L?' said Light.

'No, I don't,' said Lawliet, after a pause.

Light's lips pulled into a sharp, triumphant leer. 'Me neither.'

'That smile looks much more natural on you,' remarked Lawliet, glancing over at him.

Light looked at him out of the corner of eyes dark and glinting like the edge of a blood-soaked scythe. 'It makes sense that you would feel that way, L. This smile was the last thing you ever saw, wasn't it?' The sharp, triumphant leer stayed in place. 'All your beliefs about who Light Yagami was—who Kira was—probably got tied up in that one moment.'

Light lifted his chin, then, the expression falling away like tissue paper to reveal limpid eyes and a sunny grin. 'Don't think you have me all figured out, L—I'll surprise you again yet.'

And then Light was walking faster, a bounce in his step, waving his hand and shouting, ' _Oi! Shinigami!'_

Lawliet slouched along after him, scuffing his feet in the ash. 'Damn you, Kira.'


	6. chapter xxiii: elucidation

**elucidation**

The three Shinigami looked up from their cardgame, frozen for a moment, and then started laughing. The sound rattled like landslides of bones.

(Up close, they seemed nothing like gods.)

'Well!' declared one in loose mummy wrappings, a bone mask over his face so only its large lips showed. He was leaning on a large scythe, limbs lanky and emaciated. 'If it isn't a couple lost souls! Been a while since we've seen any of those!' He turned to the Shinigami with a cattle skull head, long horns. 'How long's it been ya think, Gook?'

'Dunno,' Gook said. 'A few thousands years or so, probably.' The eye sockets of the cattle skull glowed a dull, sickly yellow, and around his neck there was thick fringe of fur and a necklace of subdued-green beads.

The one in the mummy wrappings laughed. Where the wrappings sagged away from his body, the skin was pasty and almost translucent; insect-like. 'Back around the last time you actually won one of our games, huh?'

'It hasn't been that long since I won, Deridovely,' said Gook through bone jaws. His limbs were wrapped in bandages as well, but tighter, so that no skin showed through, and they were decorated with lines of dark crescent designs.

'I swear it has,' insisted Deridovely. His eyes weren't visible because of the bone mask, his face appear like just a large, laughing pair of dark lips.

(They looked nothing like gods.)

Gook shook his skull head, beaded necklace clacking. 'It can't have been. If it had been that long, I probably would have stopped playing.' His voice was low and grinding, like gravel.

'Don't see why you would,' said Deridovely, voice reedy and buzzing like a cicada, and gave another rattling laugh. 'It's not like there's anything else to do.'

'Oi,' said the one in the old Indian headdress, lips rotted away to expose rows of small, sharp teeth, his voice a cockroach-like hiss. His nose was rotted away, as well, and both his skin and the bandages around his arms were rotted gray. 'I think I recognize these two!'

'Recognize them, Zellogi?' said Deridovely, and laughed again. 'Why would you recognize them?'

(They sounded nothing like gods.)

'That one there,' Zellogi pointed to Light with the hook that he had at the end of his left arm instead of a hand, 'I swear that's the human that was keeping Ryuk as a pet.'

'You serious?' said Gook, while Deridovely laughed yet again. 'Yeah right!'

(Their demeanor was nothing like gods.)

'You seem to have recognized me,' said Light smoothly, stepping forward with a shallow bow. 'I'm honored.' He allowed the ground a contemptuous smile, bangs hiding his face, and they did not see it.

'You mean you're really that guy?!' Deridovely said, jaw dropped, large lips open.

'Haha, I knew it!' Zellogi said, bits of ash drifting down from his feathered headdress as he shook with cackles.

'Well, whadd'ya know,' said Gook, skull jaw clacking. 'Ryuk must've caused some real trouble, after all.'

Deridovely laughed, leaning on his scythe.

'Allow me to formerly introduce myself,' said Light, straightening, all traces of contempt gone from his face. 'My name is Light Yagami, which you can no doubt see.' He gestured to the space above his head, then lowered his hand. He smiled. 'But you may know me better as Kira.'

'Oh, this is great!' Deridovely cackled, slapping an emaciated, bandaged thigh. 'Should've known that Kira guy would give death the slip! This is the most interesting thing that has happened here in centuries!'

'But who's the L Lawliet guy, then?' said Zellogi, gesturing with his hooked appendage to Lawliet, who was standing behind Light like a nervous child hid behind their parent's legs when meeting a stranger.

'He's the detective who nearly beat me,' Light said, glancing behind him, tilting his head just enough to look at Lawliet out of the corner of his eye.

Lawliet was biting at his thumb. His dark eyes met Light's gaze for a moment, and then he leaned to the side to peek around Light's shoulder at the Shinigami. 'A pleasure,' he mumbled.

'Ahaha, this is so great!' Deridovely cackled, and clutched onto his scythe. Light turned his gaze back to the insect-like God of Death. 'Nobody tell Beyondormason or the Shinigami King—I want to see how this one plays out!'

'Beyondormason and the Shinigami King?' Light asked, tone confused and curious, as if he'd never heard of either.

'Armonia Justin Beyondormason is the Shinigami King's right-hand man,' Gook explained, an arm resting on his, long fringes of dark fur circling his wrists, his ankles. 'They have the job of enforcing the rules of the Shinigami Realm.'

'One of which being that any lost spirits found wandering about should be properly disposed of,' said Zellogi, rows of sharp teeth bared in a lipless grin.

'So this isn't where humans go when they die?' inquired Light, as if the news surprised him.

'Of course not!' Deridovely said, cackling, almost wheezing at the idea. 'If it were, that would be chaos! All those dead souls...!' His words were cut off with laughter.

'When humans die they go to Mu,' Gook explained. 'Otherwise known as Nothingness.' The teeth of his cattle skull were a little too sharp. 'All you humans become nothing, and once you are dead, you cannot come back to life.'

'How did we get here, then?' asked Light, ignoring Lawliet, who was still standing behind him and watching the Shinigami from around his shoulder.

'Particularly stubborn souls sometimes end up here when they refuse to let go of life, usually because they had a mission that they weren't able to complete,' said Gook, and shrugged. 'It doesn't happen often. Most don't have the strength of character.'

'Which is why this is so interesting!' exclaimed Deridovely, gesturing at them with his scythe as he cackled again.

'Is that so,' said Light. He tilted his head. 'Are we dead, then?'

Gookd shook his skull, beads of his necklace clacking. 'Not exactly, no.' He paused. 'But also yes.'

'You might as well be!' Deridovely cackled. 'As soon as Beyondormason or the Shinigami King find out you're here, you'll be taken care of.' Another gesture of the scythe, another rattling cackle. 'So enjoy this time while you can!'

'I see,' said Light. He strode forward and sat down in the ash between Deridovely and Zellogi, across from Gook, crossing in legs. He gestured to the cards lying on the ground in front of them, leaving Lawliet standing there awkwardly with nothing to hide behind. 'In that case, why don't you deal me in.'

'Huh?!' Deridovely exclaimed, nearly dropping his scythe. 'You want to gamble with us?!'

'Indeed,' Light said, tilting his head back. 'Like you said, it's not like there's anything else to do here.'

'But you don't have anything to gamble,' pointed out Zellogi, gesturing to him with the hook.

Light leaned back on his hands and stared upwards at the thick, dirty covering of clouds far above them, as if thinking. 'What about a story of the human world?' he suggested. He straightened his head to look at them, leaning slightly to the left as he lifted his right hand, gesturing. 'Surely something like that must be valuable to you, since nothing happens here.'

'A story of the human world, huh?' Zellogi said, sounding intrigued.

Deridovely cackled. 'I like this guy!'

'If one of you wins the game, you can choose what kind of story you want to hear,' said Light with another gesture, before replacing his hand on the ground behind him and smiling. 'As Kira, I can assure you that I have some interesting ones.'

Deridovely, cackling, almost dropped his scythe again.

Gook shook his skulled head in disbelief. 'Like you'd win a game against gods who've been playing it for millennia.'

'It's true you have me at a disadvantage,' Light said, and glanced back at Lawliet, who had crouched down behind him so he was looking at the Shinigami around Light's shoulder again.

Light turned his gaze back to the Shinigami. 'So if I do manage to win,' he said, 'I request that my spoils be taking one of your Death Notes.'


	7. chapter xxiv: instigation

**instigation**

The silence that followed was ungodlike; stunned, disbelieving, uneasy.

'A bold move,' came Lawliet's murmur close behind him, barely audible. If they'd been alive, Light might have been able to feel his breath on the back of his neck. 'I would expect nothing less from you, Kira.'

Light made no indication that he'd heard anything, and simply smiled the death gods in the face; seraphic, waiting.

He was more of a god than they ever were.

'Ahahaha!' Deridovely finally broke the silence with his rasping cackles, slapping the thigh of an insect-like leg with the long-fingered hand at the end of an insect-like arm. 'This guy's a riot!' He gestured with his scythe, wide, dark lips pulled in a mocking grin. 'Sure, if you manage to win, you can have one of our Death Notes! You can even chose whose!'

'Hey, Deridovely,' said Zellogi, rows of sharp teeth gnashing, 'are you sure we should be gambling our Death Notes?' He'd pitched his voice lower, as if he thought Light wouldn't hear.

'Why not?' said Deridovely, still cackling. 'It's not like he's going to win!'

'You mean you don't usually gamble your Death Notes?' asked Light, blinking and sitting up straight in a show of surprise.

'Of course not,' said Gook, looking at him with a deep-set, sickly yellow eye. 'Why would we do that?'

'It just seems to me that the Death Notes are the only possessions you have that you'd be troubled by losing,' said Light, with a gesture, 'and such the only gambling item with any risk. Isn't that point of gambling to take risks, after all? If you don't take risks, then there's no thrill, and it's boring.' He shook his head at the idea. 'You might as well not be doing anything.'

Another ungodlike silence followed.

'He has a point,' said Gook, eventually, scratching around the base of a horn with a clawed hand.

'But what would you do with a Death Note, human?' asked Zellogi, feathered headdress rustling as he shook his head. 'It won't extend your existence here.'

'I would use it to cause chaos in the human world, obviously,' said Light.

'But you're dead,' pointed out Zellogi, gesturing with his hook. 'What's the point?'

'But I can still watch what happens in the human world, right?' said Light. 'It would be entertaining.' His lip curled cruelly, a dark glimmer in his eyes. 'Besides, I have some… _vendettas…_ that I'd like to deal with.'

A stunned pause, and then Deridovely was cackling and slapping his sticklike thigh. Each time he did, the gray bandages loosened slightly, revealing more sickly, translucent skin. 'No wonder this guy didn't go to Mu!'

'Honestly,' said Light, sitting back and adopting an air of disdain, 'I don't understand why you just sit around gambling when you could be actually _using_ your Death Notes for something interesting.' He shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face. 'It's such a _waste_.' He glared through his fingers. 'You've all grown remiss with time.' His spread both hands in front of him, then, and smiled a condescending smile. 'I think your Death Notes would be put to much better use in my hands.'

The silence that followed was intensified by the discomforted clacking of beads and bones, the agitated rustles of feathers and fur.

Deridovely cackled finally, but it didn't quite have the boisterousness it had contained earlier. 'No wonder Ryuk liked this guy!'

'You do realize, after insulting Death Gods like that, we won't be generous about explaining the rules to you, right?' said Gook, with his unchanging skull-grin.

They really were nothing like gods.

'Are you really that afraid of me?' said Light, eyes glinting. 'Fine, then; don't explain the rules.' He shrugged. 'I'll just figure them out as I go.' He looked out from behind his bangs, lips curling. 'It'll make it more interesting for me.'

Deridovely cackled, but the sound was slightly uncertain. 'Does nothing daunt this guy?'

Light's eyes gleamed. 'Well, I _am_ a mass murderer, you know.' His hand came up so that his knuckles rested nonchalantly beneath his chin, and he smiled at them. 'Single-handedly committing genocide is, after all, no task for the fainthearted.'


	8. chapter xxv: reticence

**reticence**

Gook was shuffling the cards, aged material hushing in clawed hands; easy, practiced motions.

'Hey, you L Lawliet person over there,' said Zellogi, gesturing at the figure still crouched behind Light's form, peeking out at them from around Light's shoulder. 'You playing, too?'

Lawliet shook his head of messy black hair and retreated further behind Light.

'Why not?' asked Deridovely, cackling. 'You afraid to play us?'

'I don't have any good stories,' mumbled Lawliet around his thumb, clutching an arm around his legs and curling further in on himself.

Light turned his head to look at Lawliet out of the corner of his eye. 'Says the detective who's solved all the world's greatest murder mysteries.'

Lawliet glanced at him, gazing out from behind the dark bangs that obscured his face; he seemed to be trying to hide behind them. 'You flatter me.'

Light's lips curled for a moment. 'Don't worry about him,' he said, turning back to the Shinigami with a blank, uncaring expression. 'He's probably a terrible storyteller.'

He gestured to the cards, then, which Gook had finished shuffling. 'Let's play, shall we?' His eyes glinted. 'Unless you're too scared that I'll win.'

'The Shinigami King will definitely destroy you, one day!' said Deridovely, pointing at him with his scythe, cackling.

'Then I don't have any time to waste, now do I?' said Light. He smiled at them again, but it was a childish one, devoid of everything but an innocent excitement; disarming. 'I'm sure this game will be fun!'

Lawliet watched them all silently with wide, dark eyes.


	9. chapter xxvi: ostentatiousness

**ostentatiousness**

' _Damn it!'_ Light shouted, on his knees and slamming his fists against the ground, lips pulled in a furious sneer and eyes burning. _'I was so close!'_

'Haha, haven't seen that kind of emotion displayed in a while!' Deridovely cackled, huge lips pulled in a sickening grin and scythe resting over his shoulder. 'We told you you wouldn't win, though, didn't we?'

'I'm impressed by how quickly he figured out the rules, though,' Gook gnashed with his cattle skull jaw, gesturing at the cards scattered in the ash, at Light's hand that had come just shy of winning.

'He was kind of a genius among humans, remember?' pointed out Zellogi, with his lipless, jagged-toothed smile-sneer.

Light trembled with impotent rage. ' _Damn you all,'_ he snarled, fists clenching in the ash. ' _How dare you keep the Death Note from me?! You're hardly even fucking using them!'_

'Don't be such a sore loser,' Zellogi chided, while Deridovely and Gook cackled in the background. 'You owe me a story, you know.'

Light's body tensed, angry heaves of his chest freezing. For a moment his hands clenched, as if he might throw fistfuls of ash in their eyes, but then he relaxed, loosening his grip and letting the ash slip through his fingers. 'Yes,' he said, calmly, sitting up and looking at them, cold and collected, halting their cackles with the sudden change. 'As we agreed.' A small smirk crept over his lips. 'I definitely won't lose next time, though.'

'No wonder Ryuk liked this guy,' Zellogi gnashed to himself.

'You really think we'd let you play with us again after that close call?' Gook pointed out, shaking his horned skull, fur around his neck rustling, green beads clacking. 'We don't particularly want to lose our Death Notes.'

Light's eyes glinted. 'So you admit my superiority.'

'Hahaha!' Deridovely cackled, leaning on his scythe.

'Careful what you say to Gods of Death, human,' said Gook, with a glimmer of sickly yellow eyes. 'You shouldn't even be here, after all.'

Light stood up, sneering down a them. 'You really are all cowards,' he said scathingly. 'If you aren't willing to risk loss then you'll never be able to gain anything.' He made a grand gesture to the dark, desolate, decaying world around them, the scattered bones and rusted chains and tombstone crags. 'It's no wonder all of you and your world are _rotting!'_

Light's chest was heaving, and he closed his eyes for a moment, collecting himself. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down at them emptily and sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. 'But I suppose, when you're able to live forever, there's no reason to do anything.' He looked at them through his fingers. 'That's one way in which humans are all superior to you, you know. Human mortality is a great motivation for action, so humans constantly change and adapt.'

He gestured around them again. 'The human realm is much more interesting world than this one.' His lip curled, and he scuffed a shoe irritably in the ash, stuffing his hands into his pockets. 'It's really frustrating that I'm stuck here and can't go down and visit it again.'

The Shinigami were silent for several moments, decayed faces incapable of emoting. Deridovely's face was forever stuck a large-lipped smile, Gook's face forever an impassive cattle skull, Zellogi's face forever pulled in a rotted, serrated sneer.

'Well, if it's too boring for you here you could always give up and go to Mu,' Deridovely said finally, droning like a cicada, and cackled.

Light glared. 'That would be even _more_ boring,' he snapped, fists clenching. 'I'm not done here yet. If you three won't gamble with me again, I'll go find other Shinigami who will, and win a Death Note from one of _them_.' He looked at them sharply. 'Now, are you going to choose a story or not? I don't have forever, after all.'

'Oi oi, so impatient,' cackled Deridovely, with his insect body and large-lipped smile.

'Why don't you tell us what Ryuk was like as a pet?' said Gook, voice a rattling rockslide, cattle skull impassive and bandages and fur wrapped around long, emaciated limbs. 'Could use some good blackmail material.'

'You wouldn't even use it, Gook,' said Zellogi, with his cockroach hiss and pointed-tooth sneer and rotted gray flesh, ash-dusted Indian headdress that looked to large and heavy for his feeble form. 'Besides, I won the game, so I get to choose.'

Zellogi looked at Light with the shadow-filled rips in the rotted skin of his face that passed for eyes. 'If Kira thinks himself better at taking lives than Shinigami, let's have him tell us about what he believes to be his most impressive kill.'

Light glanced briefly at Lawliet, who was crouched there staring at him with wide, unblinking black eyes, the side of his thumb pressed over lips that were almost expressing amusement.

'Very well, then,' Light said, turning back to the three Shinigami. He smiled unkindly. 'Let me tell you why I'm more of a God of Death than any of you ever were.'


	10. chapter xxvii: duality

**duality**

'What was with the shy act, L?' asked Light, once they'd walked far enough through the gloom that the three Shinigami were long out of earshot.

'Unlike Kira, I would rather not provoke any Gods of Death,' said Lawliet, shoulders hunched, hands tucked in his pockets. 'I would much rather be underestimated and overlooked.'

'They're hardly gods,' said Light. His tone was mild, but there was the suggestion of a sneer curling his lips.

'Kira thinks himself above them.' Fully-dilated eyes underlined with deep shadows stared out from behind dark, serrated bangs.

Light tilted his head slightly, chin lifted, glancing at Lawliet out of the corner of one eye. 'Don't you?'

Lawliet raised his thumb to his lips, gaze unblinking. 'So you want to rule over them.'

The sneer curled further over Light's face. 'Who would want to rule over such useless creatures?'

'So you don't want to rule over them,' said Lawliet, biting at his thumb.

'Honestly, L,' said Light, and shook his head, bangs brushing across his face. 'What advantage was that shy act supposed to grant you?'

Lawliet's dark gaze was unwavering. 'Kira is always very careful in his words and actions when he knows he's being watched,' he remarked.

Light glared at him halfheartedly. 'With you around, L, I'm always being watched.'

'Yes,' Lawliet said. 'And Kira is always very careful in his words and actions.'

Light snorted softly, shifting his gaze away. 'The Shinigami have become too dulled by the passing doldrums of eternity to be that careful, L.'

'Everyone acts differently when they think they're being watched by a threat,' said Lawliet, moving his hand away from his mouth, imprints of teeth edges in the pad of his thumb. 'Even Shinigami.'

Light glanced at him, a small smile playing over his lips. 'You always did like to seem nonthreatening; a wolf in black sheep's clothing.'

'Says the monster in an angel's guise,' countered Lawliet. His hands rested morosely in his pockets. 'You were always too perfect.'

Light's smile distorted, and wasn't quite a smile anymore. 'The neurotic consumption of sweets; the strange ways of sitting and holding objects; the slouched posture; the childish camaraderie,' he listed. 'How much of it was an act?" He was looking at Lawliet out of the corner of coruscant eyes, hints of laughter lurking in his voice like long, sinister shadows. 'How much of it is still an act?'

Lawliet stared at him dispassionately. 'Kira first.'

Light's laughter disentombed itself from his hollow lungs. _'So that's how it is.'_

'What did Kira expect?' asked Lawliet, watching him with catacomb eyes.

Light calmed down enough to smile at him. 'It's just nice to have a hunch confirmed, is all.'

Lawliet looked up through the gloom, bits of ash falling down around them like rain, and said softly, 'It is, isn't it?'


	11. chapter xxviii: mortality

**mortality**

' _Damn it!'_ Light shouted, on his knees and slamming his fists against the ground, lips pulled in a furious sneer and eyes burning. _'I was so close!'_ Again and again and again, and each time he looked up at a group of Shinigami and snarled, 'Next time I _will_ win one of your Death Notes,' his expression was more and more _murderous_ —

—and the Shinigami laughed and laughed and _laughed,_ clutching their cadaverous sides as if their ribs might rip through their rotted flesh with the force of their vicious cackles, their amusement that this dead human child—who'd hadn't been alive for even a blink in the eye of eternity—thought he could best _gods_ who'd existed for _centuries_ , some of them for _millennia._

They watched this Light Yagami take their games in stride with an unwavering determination and supreme arrogance—bright eyes lingering on all their movements, the ways they'd been cheating since the beginning of time—and for a few moments they felt the entirely foreign sensation of _fear,_ a feeling for which they had no word and had only encountered on the faces of humans who had just realized they were about to die.

They watched this Light Yagami, for all his boasting, lose their games by a hairsbreadth and then crumple to the ground and scream in unfathomable fury and pain, as if he—a mere _wraith_ , dead and destined to fade—had some kind of divine _purpose;_ as if he were spitting in the face of Eternity and its dictum that existence, in confrontation with the nothingness that would follow it, was meaningless.

They watched this Light Yagami pull his crumpled form up out of the ash like the breaking of a marionette in rewind and then stare them straight in their eyes without a single trace of awe—as if it didn't matter that they could see his name floating in dully glowing red lettering above his head with no lifespan underneath—and command their attention like it _belonged_ to him.

They watched this Light Yagami as he told them of the human world, pacing back and forth in front of them, spreading his arms in grand gestures, words sonorous and sweet and caustic and wistful and furious and delighted and nostalgic and agonized, laughing one moment and on the verge of frustrated tears the next—all the time his eyes _alight_ with an all-consuming _passion_ —and they thought that, maybe, there was more to the human world—more to _humans_ —than they had realized.

They watched this Light Yagami with a sickening trepidation, as if this brilliant creatures might burn them, and for the first time in their ancient memories they felt a sensation that might be something akin to feeling _alive_ _._


	12. chapter xxix: condonement

**condonement**

They left yet another group of Shinigami in rattling cackles behind them.

'That was the seventeenth game you've played, Kira,' said Lawliet, 'and you've lost all of them.' He turned his dark, unblinking gaze on the figure walking silently beside him. 'You're losing on purpose.'

'It took you this long to realize that, L?' said Light placidly. Not much earlier he'd been throwing ash, screaming threats and profanities.

'You don't actually want a Death Note,' Lawliet said.

Light looked at him boredly. 'What's the point of having a Death Note if I can't go down to the human world?' he said, and gestured to the dreary desolation around them. 'It would be no fun to kill people from up here.'

Lawliet stared off into the distance, biting his thumb. 'You're trying to manipulate the Shinigami into gambling their Death Notes with each other, and the winners taking their extra Death Notes to the human world,' he said. In the distance was absolutely nothing but more ash and bones, and his dark eyes fixed back on the mystery beside him. 'Why?'

Light gave tucked his hands into his pockets and gave a longsuffering sigh. 'To cause chaos in both the human world and the Shinigami Realm, obviously. Why else?'

'To what end?' Lawliet asked.

Light looked at him impassively. His eyes, which earlier had been sparking like flint on steel, were now matte and unreadable. 'I'll let you figure that out yourself, L.'

Lawliet's teeth clenched harder over his thumb. If he'd been alive, he might have drawn blood. 'You are truly frightening, Kira,' he said, pulling his thumb from his mouth.

'You're not going to try to stop me?' asked Light.

'Technically you're not doing anything but losing at gambling,' pointed out Lawliet, glancing upwards at the dark, obscuring swaths of clouds that cast the Shinigami Realm in an eternal gloaming. The ash was still falling. 'There isn't anything to stop.'

A small smile twisted over Light's lips. 'Or maybe you actually want me to succeed.'

Lawliet looked at him. 'And why would I want that, Kira?'

Light turned to face him, smiling wider, and his eyes were phosphorescent. 'Because if I succeed, things will get more interesting for us.'


	13. chapter xxx: fatality

**fatality**

Kira had always killed with heart attacks, but that wasn't how he'd taken over the world.

No—Kira may have killed with heart attacks, sudden and harsh, but he took over the world slowly, progressively, setting in like a disease. And Ryuk had always found it funny how Light said he was creating a new world, while smiling as he watched everything burn to ashes in his palm.

That was what Kira was, had always been—not a god, but a disease that set in like a fire, lit up its victims so brilliantly, so brilliantly that they were blinded, and then burned them to ashes and let them blow away on the wind and become nothing.

To Kira, humans had been nothing.

To Kira, Shinigami had been nothing.

To Kira, death, even, was nothing. (After all, life had been nothing to him, too.)

And Ryuk wandered the rotted corpse of the Shinigami Realm with the Shinigami King's punishment stinging all over him like papercuts, and he laughed as he saw the trail of flames Kira was leaving in his wake.

The Shinigami had been as alive as wood, and now they were burning. They were all burning—they were all burning so brilliantly, so brilliantly they were blinded, completely blinded to the fact that they'd burn away and be blown as dust over the decayed world.

And Ryuk laughed as he saw all the Shinigami alight, dancing delightedly in the tickling flames, unaware that they'd soon enough be joining the ash all around them.

The Shinigami King's punishment stung like so many papercuts, and Ryuk laughed, because none of it mattered.

He was burning, after all.

They were all burning. The human world was burning. The Shinigami Realm, too, was now burning.

The only one who wasn't burning was Light Yagami, the arsonist himself. But Ryuk laughed at him, too; it was sad, really, the way Light burned down everything around him because he couldn't feel heat. And it wasn't even that he was freezing—he wasn't even cold, only lukewarm, lukewarm, trying desperately to heat his hands with the flames of the world just to feel something, passing them back and forth through the flames, back and forth through the flames, feeling nothing, feeling nothing, feeling nothing—

There was no light behind Light Yagami's dead eyes. There never had been.

(Or if there ever had, it had flickered and died long before Light chanced to look boredly out the window and see a Death Note fall from the sky.)

And Ryuk laughed, because Kira, for all the destruction and pain he caused, couldn't even see how beautiful the worlds were as they burned.


	14. chapter xxxi: candor

**candor**

Light's head was down, bangs hiding his eyes, a small smile on his lips. 'You've already figured out what I'm doing, haven't you, L?'

Lawliet glanced over at him. 'I'm flattered my Kira's perception of my deductive skills.'

Light lifted his chin slightly, just enough for the glitter of his eyes to become visible through strands of umber hair, leached of color in the gloom. 'You're actually not that good of a person, you know,' he murmured.

Lawliet tilted his head. 'I never claimed to be.'

Light's eyes were bright; blinding like the lightning that burned ghosts into one's retina. 'You want to return to the human world just as much as I do, don't you?' The smirk on his lips curved like the arc of a scythe. 'Even if it means that more people will die.'

'Kira is being unusually honest about his intentions,' remarked Lawliet, his eyes pools of darkness, deep enough to fall into and keep falling, never hitting the bottom.

'There's no reason to lie, at this point,' said Light, and shrugged, hands tucked in his pockets, turning his face away and smiling down at the ash in front of them that barely stirred as they walked. 'Besides, L, I'll need your help in order to pull this off.' He glanced over, gaze soft as gently falling dust. 'Can I trust you to help me?'

Eyes of darkness shifted away, looked into the distance and reflected none of it. For a long time Lawliet was silent.

'I don't know,' he said, finally; a murmur, like someone slowly dying, gradually draining of all blood and warmth.

'So you're being unusually honest, as well,' said Light, voice like rain falling.

'Kira started it,' Lawliet said, tone like somebody observing 'It's raining,' when it had been raining every single day for as long as could be remembered.

And in the tone of someone remarking 'Yes, and if you hadn't gone outside, you wouldn't have gotten soaking wet,' Light said, 'You didn't have to play along, L.'

But when they said nothing, there were no raindrops to fill the silence, which was so immense and absolute in the dead realm that it seemed to stretch in all directions towards eternity.

'You're right,' admitted Lawliet finally, looking over at him, and the dark shadows beneath his eyes made him look somehow wide awake and painfully alive. 'I didn't. I chose to.'

Light's smile was gentle like a corpse rotting six feet beneath the ground. 'You're still bitter about dying, aren't you?' His eyes were reflective like rain puddles; Lawliet could see his own face in them, two mirrors staring back at him.

'Like the Shinigami said,' murmured Lawliet, looking away, wild bangs casting monstrous shadows over his face, 'there's a reason we're both still here.'

'You can't beat me when I've already been beaten, L,' said Light, soft words toeing the edges of silence.

Sleepless eyes watched the ash fall like a slow, silent, unceasing rain. 'I know that, Kira.'


	15. chapter xxxii: immortality

**immortality**

Ryuk thought that maybe he'd been wrong; Light Yagami would not be the only being left unscorched once both the human world and the Shinigami Realm had burned to ash.

There'd also be L Lawliet.

L Lawliet—Ryuzaki—the only being just as lukewarm and just as empty; the only being who'd follow Kira to the end of the worlds just to bask in the light of the flames he left in his wake, wondering, as he watched it all burn, why he felt nothing, felt nothing, felt nothing—

Yes, Ryuk thought, laughing. It would be Light and Ryuzaki left standing, disappointed, at the end of the worlds, wondering why they hadn't gone insane, or ceased to exist, or found a reason to exist, being still just as numb and restless as they'd always been; and they'd wonder why they burned everything to the ground and pretended to feel something as they watched the flames dance and devour.

They'd look at each other, the flickering reflection of the flames the only light in their dead eyes, and they would wonder why they'd goaded one another into it; why their taunts and games and challenges had lit a small spark of hope, somewhere deep in the voids within each of them, that maybe they could feel some amount of heat. And they'd realize, eventually, that it was that small spark that had kept them from freezing (which would have been the next best thing, if they couldn't burn), and had kept them lukewarm, lukewarm, lukewarm—

And the fire would ravage all in its path, merciless and dispassionate, just the same as they.

They'd look at one another, after it was all over, and at the burnt skeletons of the worlds around them—realizing that they'd been both the beginning and the end of the other's life, and able to neither love nor hate each other for it—and that tiny spark of hope would neither flare brighter nor extinguish.

No, Ryuk thought, and laughed harder. They'd look at one another, and at the ashen remains of the worlds around them, and they'd start another empty, hollow game.

It was sad, really, thought Ryuk: the way they'd never feel the heat of flames devouring their bodies so brilliantly, so brilliantly, and how they'd never die because they had never, in the first place, been alive. Nothing about them was real; there was no substance there to burn.

If you stripped away all their lies—all their masks and acts and elaborate disguises—there'd be nothing but bones.

'So L is dead,' Ryuk had said, and laughed. 'Guess I can't expect anything interesting anymore.'

And Light had smiled and told him that wasn't true, because he would see the creation of a new world—and Ryuk had only laughed harder, because Light hadn't even realized just how much of a liar he was; hadn't even realized that he'd started his inevitable decay (long before Near showed up to finish him off).

The ideal of Kira could exist without L to juxtapose it, it was true, but Light could not live without a challenge—and Light _was_ Kira.

Had the man who called himself L ever realized how necessary he'd been to the existence of Kira as the ideal's living, breathing incarnation? Ryuk wondered, and laughed as all over his body the sting of papercuts flared.


	16. chapter xxxiii: enmity

**enmity**

There was a jagged crag of rock resembling a dark, menacing throne, and Light was lounging on it as if he owned all the worlds.

'It's too bad, really,' he said, chin resting delicately on the top of his hand, a smirk toying over his lips. 'It would still be nice to become a living god.'

Lawliet was standing, leaning against the side of the rock with his head tilted back, hands in his pockets and one ankle crossed over the other. 'What did you plan on doing, if you'd managed to rule the world and change it into a utopia where only kind people lived?' he asked.

Light glanced over at him with gleaming eyes. 'What do you mean, L?'

Lawliet tilted his head to the side to look at him, eyes a matte and absolute black, like two shattered windows that opened into the darkest depths of space. 'Would you truly have been satisfied with that, Kira?'

Light looked away, hand shifting so that his chin was resting against the heel of his palm, fingertips touching lightly against the side of his face along the socket of one eye. He stared into the gathering darkness, watching the tendrils of mist curl and close in around them.

'Originally, I think, I would have been,' he said, eventually. 'I really did want to create a world where I didn't have to see the disgusting flaws of humanity all around me.'

Light tilted his head, glancing over at Lawliet. 'But then you showed up, L.' Maybe it was a trick of the twilight, but his eyes almost seemed to be a smoldering red through the mist, like burning embers just barely covered in ash. 'I expected that there would be people who would rebel against me, but I didn't expect to actually be _challenged_.' His wry smile curled like the slow-motion flicker of a flame. 'Before you confronted me, L, I'd never been challenged by anything in my entire life.'

He looked away, then, his smile evanescing like smoke. Softly, almost contemplatively, he said: 'So if you hadn't shown up, I think I would have been content to simply rule the world.'

'So it's all my fault, then?' spoke Lawliet quietly, letting his head fall back against the stone, dark bangs hiding his face like sharp, shadowy fingers.

'You changed my game, L,' Light told him, just as quietly, like they were children camped in a tent on a moonless night sharing dark secrets instead of sleeping. 'And I didn't even realize it until after I'd killed you.'

He looked down, then, bangs obscuring his eyes and a sardonic smile slinking catlike over his lips. 'You showed me what it felt like to be _alive_ , L. To feel the thrill of challenge and risk.' The smile bared its teeth. 'After that, I could never be satisfied with simply punishing criminals and quashing petty resistances.'

Lawliet looked over at him, and Light lifted his head to meet the searching gaze. The red light in his eyes did not look sane. 'You should be glad I killed you, L,' he said, like it was an ultimatum. 'If you'd won, you would have lived out the rest of your life agonizingly aware of the full extent of the hollowness inside you; the gnawing hunger you would never be able to satisfy.'

He grinned, and his smile was as angelic as the red glow of his eyes was demonic. 'After facing Kira, do you really think you would ever have found another case that interested you?' His voice was gentle, but it held a trace of foreboding, like the tone of someone admonishing an endearing but obstinately foolish child. 'All other killers would have seemed uninspired; all other mysteries would have seemed prosaic; all other risks would have seemed insignificant. You would have been bored out of your mind, L.'

Light's seraphic grin remained perfectly in place, but it looked all kinds of wrong. 'How long do you think you would have been able to suffer the monotony before your life became a living hell?''

Lawliet had stopped pretending to breathe. He was simply staring, still as a corpse.

After several long moments Light's glowing red eyes turned away. He raised a hand, watching his fingers curl like talons. 'I hated Near and Mello,' he murmured. His voice, like a crypt, was echoey and dark and full of death. 'I utterly loathed them.'

He looked back over at Lawliet, his eyes smoldering scarlet. Vehemence stained his voice like blood seeping from an open wound. 'However much I hated you, L, I hated them more because they were _not_ you.'

He looked down, then, talon-like fingers gripping the obsidian on either side of him, his knuckles bone-white and ghastly. 'They could never be anything more than pale imitations, and yet they had the _audacity_ to try to be you.' His voice was dripping and bloody, a terrible sneer scrawled across what was visible of his face. _'They disgusted me.'_

Lawliet watched, silent, unable to look away as Light clenched the stone so tightly his entire body shook, the tendons in his hands jutting like they might tear through his skin.

The only sound in the darkness was the rock's eerie crackling.

It was an eternity before Lawliet blinked, his dead lungs restarting their gentle rise and fall beneath his ghost-pale shirt. 'Kira-kun,' he murmured: an entreaty; a warning; an acknowledgement.

Light's shaking stopped, and slowly the tension faded from his form.

'I was going insane long before I was locked in that cell,' he said finally, quietly.

'Is that why you were never able to take them seriously?' asked Lawliet.

Light tilted his head to look at him, eyes glowing a dim red. 'Have you ever hated someone, L?' he asked softly. 'Have you ever _really_ hated someone?' A hand crawled up over his face as his eyes closed, and he leaned back against the dark stone, his voice distant and murky; like someone speaking out of a dream. 'It's a darkness that coalesces in your chest, wells up hot and thick in your mouth, your eyes. It feels like being consumed.' He opened his red eyes again, staring through the cracks between his claw-like fingers. 'Try to think straight during _that_ , L.'

Lawliet held his gaze for several moments before he finally looked away, dark bangs slashing jaggedly over his features. 'You're right, Kira,' he murmured, his shoulders hunching. 'I think, if I'd won, I would have had to take my own life at some point.'

Light's hand slipped from his face. 'It's your own fault, L.'

Lawliet looked at him, then, and the whites of his eyes were visible all the away around his black irises. 'It's not like I had a choice, Kira,' he said, biting his thumb. 'If you'd killed all the criminals and people stopped committing crimes, I would have been out of a job.'

Light stared at him for a long moment and then doubled over laughing.


	17. chapter xxxiv: discretion

**discretion**

A gray, misshapen object rolled out of the thick, swirling mists. It came to a stop at Light's feet.

Leaning down, Light picked it up. A single bite had been taken out of it.

Light tossed the apple up into the air, caught it one-handed, glanced at the smooth, shiny gray surface. He brought the fruit to his lips.

There was a soft _crunch_ as he bit into the flesh, turning his head with the movement. His hair swept over his eyes.

He chewed slowly, deliberately, then swallowed.

'Tastes like ash,' he murmured.

He tore off another bite, chewed and swallowed. Smiled.

'You can come out now, Ryuk,' he said, turning the apple over in his hands. Glinting eyes looked out from behind his hair. He was still smiling. 'I think you've been hiding there in the mists long enough.'

Lawliet turned to see a towering figure looming in the darkness, all murky shadow except for two glowing red and yellow eyes.

Light's grin widened. He tilted his head, eyes glittering, fingers tapping silently on the armrest of his dark and monolithic throne. 'It's been a while, Ryuk.'

' _Kukukuku.'_ The Shinigami emerged from the mists: spiky dark hair and widow's peak, half-rotted nose and sharp teeth, gangly limbs and long black feathers stitched to his skin. 'So you _are_ here, Light Yagami.'

Ryuk grinned his perpetual, face-splitting grin. 'No wonder things've been getting interesting.'


	18. chapter xxxv: premonition

**premonition  
**

Light stared at the Shinigami with languid eyes and listlessly let the apple slip from his fingers.

The apple seemed to fall in slow-motion, landing with with a soft _thump,_ bouncing slightly, rolling unevenly over the ground.

'Things have been getting interesting, ka,' Light mused. He smiled curiously; innocently. 'In what way?'

The apple came to a stop, covered in ash, at Ryuk's feet.

The Shinigami leaned over and picked it up, pinching the stem between his dark, claw-like nails. Garish metal rings adorning his long fingers glinted in the half-light.

'Well, there's been a lotta gossip lately...' Ryuk lifted the apple above his head and dropped it into his mouth, core and all, his teeth gnashing on the shriveled flesh. 'Y'know, some Shinigami mopin' around and whinin' about how their Death Notes were gambled offa 'em and dropped into the human world... some other Shinigami tryin' to count how many it's been and suggestin' that over six of 'em are already circulatin' down there...'

Ryuk swallowed the last of the apple and wiped the ash from his grinning blue lips. 'But given that only six Death Notes are functional in the human world at any given time…' His grin was a rictus of dark amusement. 'Anyways. Seems Beyondormason and the Shinigami King have been getting Shinigami askin' 'em to do something about it.'

'Is that so?' Light inquired mildly, leaning back in his quasi-throne, a hand resting delicately against his face so that his fingers obscured his mouth.

'Not that there's anything they _can_ do,' Ryuk grinned, 'if the Death Notes are already down there and the Shinigami attached to 'em are followin' all the rules.'

Light's hand moved from his face, revealing the complacent curl of his lips. 'Do you want to see things get even _more_ interesting, Ryuk?'

' _Kukuku.'_ Ryuk's eyes were blank, but his grin was knowing. 'You're always up to something, aren't ya, Light?'

Light's eyes glowed a bloody red. 'It's been a while since I've heard that name,' he said, watching his ghostlike fingers tap slowly, silently against the dark stone. 'It doesn't seem to fit anymore, somehow.' He glanced over at the Shinigami, then. 'Tell me, Ryuk: did you manage to finagle a second Death Note again?'

'Huh?' Ryuk sounded surprised, even if he didn't look it. 'How'd ya know?'

'Drop it on the ground,' Light ordered.

' _Hyuk hyuk_ _,'_ Ryuk cackled. 'You're a real slave-driver, y'know?' He pulled a Death Note from the dark pouch slung on a chain around his waist. 'I'm only doin' this 'cause I'm bored, though.' Shark-toothed rictus still slicing up his high gaunt cheeks, he dropped the notebook into the ash, sending up a slowly unfurling plume of gray-white particles into the dark air. 'I'm not tryin' to help ya or anything.'

Light rose from his rocky throne and walked soundlessly over the ground. There was an imperial glide to his step, an totalitarian line to his shoulders, a despotic tilt to his chin, a draconian glint to his eyes; the attention-commanding aura of one who believed himself a god-king.

It made Ryuk laugh.

Light, of course, paid his laughter no mind, ignoring it soundly and disparagingly.

Crouching down with all the longsuffering grace of the resignedly curious, Light took the Death Note in careful fingers. Turning it over in his hands, he gently brushed the ash from the black cover, examining the hieroglyphic symbols engraved there, before flipping the notebook open and skimming through the empty pages like someone might peruse a magazine.

When he reached the end he closed the notebook with a soft _fwhump_ that made Lawliet tilt his head like a dog perking up its ears, though his dark eyes did not glance over.

Light's lips curled upwards as he rose back to his full height, the smile faint and deceptively innocuous, like the first wisps of smoke rising from the inchoate heart of a wildfire.

Ryuk cackled. 'Ya don't hafta look so pleased about it, y'know!'

Light looked over at him, and his expression became almost satirically solemn. 'Now this Death Note belongs to me,' he said, holding up the killer notebook like a college graduate might hold up a diploma, 'which means that you're obliged to possess me again, Ryuk.'

' _Kukuku_ _,'_ Ryuk grinned.

Light tucked the Death Note into the back of his black dress-pants, making sure his black dress-shirt hid it from view.

He looked back at Ryuk, then, his red eyes glinting.

'Take us to the Shinigami King.'

It wasn't a request.

 _'Us?'_ Ryuk repeated blankly, looking between him and Lawliet, who was still leaning languidly against the stone, hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans, gazing up at the dark shrouds of smoke shifting above them, his stare like that of a child looking for pictures in the clouds. Ryuk grinned, because his face never did anything else. 'What, so you two're workin' together now?'

Light glanced at Lawliet out of the corner of his eyes. 'Unless L would rather stay here.'

Lawliet turned his gaze on them, then; the whites of his eyes seeming to glow slightly in the gloom, making the dark voids of his irises appear even deeper and more fathomless. 'Like you'd let me stay, Kira-kun,' he said, pushing off from the stone and walking over to them, hands still tucked in his pockets. He wasn't slouching. 'I believe I am correct in assuming that your plan hinges on my cooperation.'

'Huh?' Ryuk said, looking back and forth between them with his blank red and yellow eyes that each seemed to stare in a slightly different direction, his grin frozen in place. 'When did this happen?'

'A lot can happen once you're dead, Ryuk,' patronized Light. 'L has been cooperating with me for a while now.' He threw Lawliet a glance that seemed to say: _Haven't you, Lawliet-kun?_

Lawliet brought a thumb up to his lips and pressed it there.

'Oi,' Ryuk said, raising a clawed hand uncertainly, pitching his voice lower as if only for Light's ears: 'You really trust your former enemy to help ya, Light?'

'Help me?' Light said, and laughed airily. 'No.' He gave the Shinigami a grin that lit up his scarlet eyes. 'I trust him to help himself.'

Ryuk turned to look back over at Lawliet, who was staring down at the ground, wild black hair obscuring his face, thumb still pressed to his lips.

' _Hyuk hyuk.'_ Ryuk's started to laugh, and his entire body shook with the force of his hacking cackles. 'This is sure an interesting development, alright. To think the two of ya would team up!' His grin was dark and delighted. ' _Kukukuku.'_

Light's eyelids lowered dangerously. 'The Shinigami King, Ryuk,' he reminded him coolly. 'I'm tired of waiting.'

Still looking down, Lawliet murmured: 'I, too, share in Kira-kun's sentiment, Shinigami Ryuk...'

'Oh?' Ryuk grinned, like he'd just been offered an apple.

When Lawliet raised his gaze to look at them his eyes were as black as rot. 'Yes.'

But even though he was answering the Shinigami, his gaze—black and rotted as it was—was fixed on Yagami Light, who stared back at him like a sphinx.

Slowly, oozingly, an eerie smile bled over Light's lips. 'Did you hear that, Ryuk?' he asked quietly, without moving his gaze from Lawliet's own.

'Hear what?' Ryuk asked. 'What are ya talking about?'

A slight shift of Lawliet's pale thumb divulged the subtle crescent of his smile, and Light looked down, his hair hiding his face as his shoulders beginning to tremble spasmodically.

'Huh?' Ryuk said, flapping closer, twisting his body around to try in vain to view Light's expression. 'What is it, Light?'

Tilting his head back, Light regarded the Shinigami from the corner of inferno-blazing eyes, his smile exposed like bones and as gleeful as death.

'We're _bored,_ Ryuk.'


	19. chapter xxxvi: callousness

**callousness**

'We're _bored_ , Ryuk.'

Ryuk's grin was frozen and morbid.

 _Well, if that isn't the presage of the ends of the worlds..._

'Yeah, okay,' Ryuk said, after several moments of ash-settling silence. 'I'll take ya there.' He pulled another shriveled gray apple from his feathered collar, biting into it with a _crunch_ , speaking as he chewed: 'But the Shinigami King isn't that easy to trick, ya know.'

Light rolled his demonic eyes upwards. 'You've tricked him at least twice now, haven't you?' His tone was insouciant; condescending. 'It can't be that hard.'

' _Kukuku,'_ Ryuk cackled, holding the dehydrated fruit by its stem and taking another bite, bits of apple and spittle flying from his gnashing teeth. 'You're as cruel as ever, Light.'

'You flatter me,' Light said, and smiled.


	20. chapter xxxvii: salutation

**salutation  
**

Lawliet was watching Ryuk with round black eyes and an uncanny smile. 'It's good to meet you, Light's Shinigami,' he said, bringing a thumb to his impishly curved lips, his stare intense and unblinking.

'Huh?' Ryuk grinned blankly, before: 'Oh, that's right! We've never actually officially met, have we? _Hyuk hyuk.'_ He waved a clawed hand and said cheerfully, 'Hi L!' and then tossed the rest of the apple into his mouth, crunching it between his teeth.

Lawliet rubbed his lip between his fingers, staring at Ryuk like the Death God was an exciting new puzzle, before looking back over at Light.

Musingly, Lawliet said: 'In the end, neither of us were killed by humans, were we, Kira-kun?'

Light returned his gaze blandly. 'Yes, that is how it is.'

Lawliet's fingers let go of his lip and his disquieting smile widened. 'That's rather ironic, don't you think?'

'Indeed,' said Light, but Ryuk was the one who was laughing.


	21. chapter xxxviii: vengeance

**vengeance**

Light pulled out the Death Note as they walked, his fingers brushing lightly, almost reverently over the black cover. There was a slight upward curve to his lips. 'Say, there may be over six Death Notes already circulating in the human world, but this Death Note will work while I'm here, right?'

'Yeah,' Ryuk confirmed. He cackled lowly. 'You got some people ya wanna kill, Light?'

Light seemed to ignore the Shinigami's question, instead turning his attention to the figure of Lawliet walking beside him. 'L-kun?' he queried.

Lawliet turned his dark eyes from the creeping mists, meeting Light's gaze. 'Yes, Kira-kun?'

'If I killed Near, would you be upset?' Light's eyes glowed a demonic crimson, but aside from that his expression was mild, almost angelic: all innocent, childlike curiosity.

Lawliet stared at him. 'You won't kill him, Kira-kun,' he said bluntly. 'Not until you rub his failure in his face.'

Light's eyes glowed ominously but his lips curved into a smile. 'You know me too well.'

Lawliet looked away and shrugged, outlined against the darkness in a pale, spectral antumbra. 'It's what I would do, if I were in your place.' He looked up, as if there were something hovering above them in the gloom; maybe a ghost of a moon, except that there wasn't even that. 'But to answer your question…'

Lawliet tilted his head, his dark, hollowed eyes once again fixing themselves on Light's face. 'Would you be upset, Kira-kun, if you were in my place and I killed Near?'

Light looked up at that same shadowy absence of a celestial body that Lawliet had been gazing at moments before. 'I would be disappointed,' he said, after a moment.

He looked back over at Lawliet and smiled indulgently. 'So I guess it's lucky for you that I hate to disappoint.'


	22. chapter xxxix: revival

**revival**

' _Hyuk hyuk.'_

Ryuk's cackling interrupted Light and Lawliet's staring contest, and they both turned their gazes on his emaciated figure.

'Sounds like you two're real friends now, huh?' Ryuk grinned.

The three of them had come to a stop.

'The Shinigami King, Ryuk,' Light intoned, eyes red and half-lidded. 'Surely I don't need to ask you twice.'

'Yeah yeah, okay,' Ryuk said, long, tattered wings stirring the mist as he started moving again. 'But I'm only letting you order me around like this 'cause I know you'll be doing something entertaining, y'know.'

'You followed me around for almost six years, Ryuk,' Light said dully, as he and Lawliet followed the God of Death, Light tucking the Death Note back into its hiding place against his cold skin. 'Of course I know that.'

' _Hyuk hyuk,'_ Ryuk cackled. His pupiless red irises, surrounded by yellow sclera, stared vaguely, almost unseeingly in Light's direction, but his grin was pointed. 'It's good to have you back, Light.' He cackled again. 'Or should I call you _Kira?_ '

'Yes, Ryuk.' When Light smiled, the expression was merciless; mirthless and phlegmatic. 'Kira has returned.'


	23. chapter xl: remains

**remains**

'And you, L Lawliet?' Ryuk asked, grinning much too wide for his emaciated face. 'Has the supersleuth L returned as well?'

Lawliet looked up at the ash that was still gently falling, deep bruises beneath his fully dilated eyes.

'No,' said Lawliet, his tone monotonous. 'L is long dead.' He tilted his head back to look at them, then, and his eyesockets were brimming with so much darkness that they looked in danger of spilling black trails of ink down his cheeks. 'Same as Light Yagami.'

' _Kukuku,'_ Ryuk cackled, his grin never wavering. 'Then who are you now, then?'

'I'm…' Lawliet trailed off and looked away, bangs falling over his eyes that dripped with shadows, his thumb lifting to his lips and catching between his teeth. Lowly, almost inaudibly, he finally murmured: 'I'm still figuring that out.'


	24. chapter xli: mirth

**mirth**

Ryuk flapped along as the two sleepless spirits walked just slightly behind and to the side of him, his wingbeats stirring the still, shadow-necrotized air just as silently and imperceptibly as their footsteps shifted the pale, deathly-settled ash.

'Hey, Light,' Ryuk spoke up at some point, notes of amused curiosity audible in his scraping voice, 'what will you do if you destroy everything by accident?'

Light looked at the Shinigami from behind his bangs, his expression uncomprehending. 'Destroy everything?' he repeated, his tone mild and questioning.

'Yeah, in the Human World,' Ryuk said.

Light's eyelides lowered slightly, his gaze becoming lazy and derisive. 'Do you really think we'd be so careless, Ryuk?' His tone dipped down at the end rather than lifting, more of an admonition than a question.

'Careless?' the Shinigami repeated, and he said it as if it would never have occurred to him. 'Uh, not really. But you've been disconnected from the Human World for a while.' His grin was as vague and unchanging as his unfocused red and yellow stare. 'Ya might accidentally push the world too hard, y'know?'

'Hm,' said Light dully in response. His face was still except for the shift of his eyes in Lawliet's direction. 'What do you think, L?'

Lawliet looked upwards in thought. The gray clouds shifted overhead, dark and slowly roiling, an uneasy but listless turmoil above a dark and ossified landscape.

After a moment Lawliet turned his blank black eyes to look back at them. 'There's a fifteen percent chance,' he stated.

Light's lips quirked. 'I'll take those odds.'

Lawliet tilted his head, putting a thumb to his lips, eyes dark and round and amused. 'In the beginning of the investigation, there was only a one percent chance that you were actually Kira, Kira-kun,' he reminded him.

'That's what you told everyone,' Light agreed, an equally amused gleam in his crimson gaze. He smiled confidentially. 'But you're a liar, Lawliet-kun.'

Lawliet's stare was resolute. 'No, I'm not,' he lied.

Light laughed darkly.


	25. chapter xlii: familiarity

**familiarity**

'So you're really calling him Lawliet-kun now, huh?' Ryuk said, and he shook with delighted, wheezing cackles. _'_ You two really _have_ teamed up.' His teeth were sharp and his blue-lipped grin sliced up his gaunt, high-boned cheeks. 'I don't think I've ever witnessed anything so terrifying.'

Light glanced at him from the corner of his scarlet eyes, gaze half-hidden by his hair. 'Scared, Ryuk?' he murmured.

'Positively shivering,' Ryuk grinned. His lips never moved when he spoke, his triangular teeth perpetually bared, his eyes eternally drifted off in slightly different directions.

'I see,' said Light boredly. His gaze flicked across the Shinigami's anemic, gangling form. 'Those wounds,' he noted, glancing back up at the Ryuk's face, 'those from the Shinigami King?'

'Huh?' Ryuk uttered. He might have blinked, if he'd had eyelids with which to do so. 'You noticed?'

Light looked at him sedately. 'Did you really think I wouldn't?'

'I suppose not,' Ryuk admitted, long arms and legs hanging limply as he flapped slowly but silently beside them. 'Yeah, they're from him. I didn't necessarily always act as a Shinigami should.' He lifted his clawed, black-clothed hands in a vague, almost resigned gesture. 'The punishment really wasn't so bad, though.' He dropped his hands again, adding, almost sadistically gleeful: 'I've seen much worse.'

'I'm sure,' said Light placidly. With a blasé, apathetic curiosity, he tilted his chin up slightly to regard the Shinigami. 'Do you know how much the Shinigami King can do to us? Do the same rules apply to wandering spirits as to Shinigami?'

'I wouldn't know,' Ryuk said. He cackled, the sound dehydrated and asthmatic and full of schadenfreude the way a scarecrow was full of straw. 'We don't get beings like you two around here too often.'

Light let out a jaded sigh. 'As helpful as always, I see.'

'Yup!' said Ryuk cheerfully.

Lawliet was watching them with blackhole eyes. 'You two really are quite close,' he observed, a thumb pressed to his lips.

Light glanced over at him, red eyes languid and half-lidded. 'What did you expect, Lawliet-kun?' His tone was mild. 'Ryuk followed me around for years _.'_

Lawliet shifted his gaze upwards, pale thumb rubbing over his lower lip. 'So Kira-kun's only friend in the entire world was a Shinigami,' he murmured. His hand moved away from his mouth as he turned his head to look over at Light again, his eyes dark and callous. 'That's a little sad.'

Light's stare remained bored and lethargic. 'Says the person who had no friends at all.'

Lawliet leaned forward to bite his thumb, but his gaze remained steadily on Light's face. 'Touché,' he murmured.


	26. chapter xliii: ennui

**ennui**

'Hey, Ryuk.' Light turned his listless red eyes on the Shinigami. 'How much farther till we get there?'

'What are ya, a little kid?' Ryuk said, grinning like a clown. 'The Shinigami Realm is a big place, y'know. There might not be much here, but what there is there's a lot of.' He chuckled breathily, as if at some private joke.

Light's tone was dull and incurious as he said: 'The apples, too?'

'Oh, sure!' Ryuk grinned. 'Orchards of 'em!' He reached back with a long arm, pulling a shriveled gray apple from within the thick cluster of feathers basted to his skin, holding it up in front of his face and taking a large bite out of it. 'Not that it's all that great, since they're so dry.' He tossed the rest of the apple, core and all, into his mouth, crunching it to pieces without closing his grinning lips. 'But it's enough to keep away my withdrawal symptoms.'

'That's fortunate, at least,' said Light dryly.

'Say,' said Lawliet, looking over at them with dark, opened-wide eyes, 'are we there yet?'


	27. chapter xliv: antipathy

**antipathy**

The Shinigami Realm all looked the same, and everything was gray: the thick cloudercover, and the mysterious light that filtered through it; the ash that drifted from the sky to cover the ground, and the bones that jutted up out of it; the dark, rocky crags, and the rusted chains that draped from their surfaces; the strange, cobweb-dead trees, and the fruit that hung shriveled from their branches; the shiftless mists that made the edges of the horizon waver, and the jagged mountains that lurked perpetually in the distance, never seeming to move any closer.

The entire world, it seemed, was a corpse, its rotted and disintegrating remains submerged in the depths of a damp, deadened silence, the lifeless mirror-surface of which was rippled only occasionally by distant and indistinguishable echoes.

They might have been walking for several hours, or for mere minutes, or for entire days or even months. Years, maybe.

'Ryuk,' said Light.

'Yeah?' the Shinigami replied.

Light looked over at the Death God, his eyes a dark and bloody red. 'If you're leading us in the wrong direction, I will find a way to kill you.'

Ryuk gave a hacking laugh. _'_ I don't doubt that,' he said, his grin as unending as the gray expanse of rotten world through which they were walking. 'Don't worry, this is the right way.'

'So how much longer?' said Light.

'Dunno,' Ryuk grinned. 'It's not like there's any reliable way to tell time in the Shinigami Realm, y'know.' He chuckled rattlingly. 'A lotta Shinigami die 'cause of it, since they lose track of time and forget to write enough names.'

Light's eyes narrowed. 'So you don't know how long we've been here?'

'Nah,' Ryuk grinned. 'I didn't even run inta ya till a bit ago, remember? And I dunno how long you were wandering around here before that.' There was the dehydrated rasp of amusement in his throaty voice. 'If we find one of the windows to the human world we can check the date down there, though.'

The blood-red of Light's eyes grew murkier. 'You're still incredibly unhelpful.'

'Yup!' Ryuk grinned.

'Tch,' Light said, looking away, his bangs brushing over his eyes. 'I really will kill you one day, you know.'

'That's not very nice,' Ryuk grinned. 'Threatenin' to kill me an' all.'

'You did the same thing to me, if you remember,' said Light.

'So what, then?' Ryuk grinned. 'Is this payback?'

'Yes,' said Light: 'for this route taking so long.' He tilted his head back to look at the Shinigami from the corner of one bloody eye. 'Why aren't we there yet?'

''Cause the Shinigami Realm is a big place,' Ryuk grinned. 'You're pretty immature, y'know that?'

'No, Ryuk,' said Light, 'I was not at all aware of that.' His stare was insolent, derisive, gory. 'And furthermore, I disagree completely with the accusation, and I think that you're an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about.'

'You're in a really bad mood right now,' Ryuk grinned.

'No, I'm not,' said Light. He tilted his chin up further, leveling his gaze at the Shinigami. 'I'm in a perfectly genial and magnanimous mood. Which is why I haven't yet diverted my full intellect to the task of finding a way to kill you.'

Ryuk's grin widened to let out a smoky laugh. 'I haven't heard you talk like this in ages!' he declared, delightedly. 'You really were a bratty teen.' He looked back down at Light, his yellow and red eyes glowing in the gloom. 'I'd confess to missing your frustrated rants,' he grinned, 'if I were capable of such a sentimental feeling.'

Light looked at him with the indignant mouth of a child and the passionless eyes of a cold, calculating killer.


	28. chapter xlv: petulance

**petulance**

Lawliet was watching Light, a thumb pressed to the pale crescent of his lips. 'I'm not sure I've seen this side of you before, Kira-kun,' he murmured, and Light glanced over at him sharply.

'You liar,' said Light, and his gaze deadened to match the childish moue of his mouth. 'You knew it was there from the moment I killed Lind L. Taylor, and I knew you were the same from the moment you came up to me and said 'I am L.''

'I did rather give myself away, didn't I?' mused Lawliet, thumb and forefinger twisting his smiling lips.

Light let out a soft, incredulous exhalation through his nose that was almost a laugh. 'That's an understatment, Lawliet-kun.' The corner of his lips curled, just enough to light the bloody gleam of his eyes.

'But it worked, didn't it?' said Lawliet, and his expression was round-eyed and childishly obstinate.

'Oh, yes, it all worked,' said Light agreeably. His eyes were sanguine and his smile was saccharine. 'Which is exactly why you ended up dead.'

Lawliet's pale fingers teased the smile from his traitorous lips. 'I don't think we've had such an inane and shallow conversation since the period when you had no memories of being Kira,' he observed.

'I haven't punched you yet, have I?' Light said, and his tone was droll.

'I wonder,' Lawliet murmured thoughtfully to himself, before turning to the Shinigami. 'Is it possible for us to become completely intangible by will?' he inquired.

'Huh?' Ryuk grinned. 'How would I know?'

'A pity,' Lawliet murmured. He turned his attention back to Light and remarked: 'Your Shinigami isn't very helpful.'

'He's not,' Light agreed.

'Don't you think the easiest way to find out would just be to punch each other and see?' Ryuk suggested, grinning.

Light looked at him balefully. 'I'm sure that would be amusing for you, Ryuk.'

'Hey, it's not like Shinigami get into a lot of fistfights,' Ryuk said, and he was still grinning his unremitting grin. Almost contemplatively, though, he added: 'I don't think it's against the rules, but I don't think anyone's ever tried it.'

Lawliet's thumb distorted his lips and Light's eyelids lowered.

'So you think of us as Shinigami, now?' Light asked, and his narrowed eyes were crimson and gleaming.

'Huh?' said Ryuk, and despite his grin he sounded disoriented. 'Uh. Not really.' He raised a clawed hand, scratching a finger down his cheek, his eyes vague. 'But I guess I don't really think of you as human at this point, either.'

Light closed his eyes. 'Say, Ryuk.' When he opened his eyes again they were dully red and barely interested. 'How do Shinigami come into being?'

Ryuk grinned. 'We don't do that weird sex thing, if that's what ya mean.'

Light's eyelids lowered further. 'You know I know that already.'

Ryuk shrugged his broad, feathered shoulders, the movement lost amid the flapping of his wings. 'Dunno, honestly,' he said. 'Armonia Justin might know, or the Shinigami King. You can try askin' 'em, if ya want.' He was still grinning. 'Why are ya interested, Light? Ya really wanna become a Shinigami or somethin'?'

Light scoffed. 'Like I'd actually want to become a Shinigami.' He tilted his head back to look at Ryuk with all the ascendancy of a sovereign, his eyes vermilion and bored while his voice dripped like quicksilver: 'I was just curious how beings as pointless and rotten as you were created, is all.'


	29. chapter xlvi: divinity

**divinity**

Ryuk let out a throaty cackle, his blue-lipped grin stretching from ear to ear. There was a gleeful kind of wonderment that bordered on anticipation in his tone as he said: 'I don't think I've ever encountered a human who was so irreverent of Death Gods.'

'That's probably because Kira-kun still foolishly believes himself to be a God,' said Lawliet.

Light stopped walking.

It was another beat before Lawliet and Ryuk both halted as well, turning to look back at him with their round, unblinking eyes.

Light's hair concealed his face, his body perfectly still except for his right hand, which opened and closed at his side as if aching for a pen.

'I'm closer to a God than anyone has ever been in all of human history,' he said, and his voice was quiet as death. 'In a mere six years, I decreased the global crime rate by seventy percent and eradicated all war. I had the entire world, across all nations and cultures, trembling in fear of me and bowing to my judgment.'

His fingers finally stilled, clenched around nothing. 'Nobody else, human or Shinigami, could possibly have done that; single-handedly ended as many lives as I did—single-handedly _saved_ as many lives as I did.' His next breath was half snigger and half sob. 'Single-handedly _changed the world_ the way I did _._ '

He looked up, then, and his angelic grin was fixed on his face like a cracking mask, pain dancing like flame in the lurid, chthonic red glow of his eyes.

'So pray tell me: if that's not what it is to be a God, then _what is?'_


	30. chapter xlvii: humanity

**humanity**

For several moments after Light finished speaking the Shinigami Realm was drowned in a shadowy silence and sharpened in an almost-perfect stillness. The only movement was the ash falling gently all around them, blindingly light-gray in the gloom. It settled in their hair, on their shoulders, drifted in front of their unblinking eyes.

'I'm glad you're not actually a god, Kira,' said Lawliet finally, the ash cascading from his dark and unruly hair as he lowered his gaze to the ground and shattered the deathly quietude. Softly, he explained: 'I wouldn't have had the pleasure of going up against you, otherwise.'

The fingers of Light's right hand slowly relaxed, and when he looked down his hair hid the demonic red glow of his eyes and made him appear more worldly. 'You might have been the only thing that kept me human, Lawliet,' he murmured then, like it was a concession.

Lawliet's lips curved somberly, and when he tilted his head to look at Light through his sharp, shadowy bangs, his was gaze dark and macabre. 'I think I was quite possibly the only person who believed you always were, Light-kun.'


	31. chapter xlviii: amity

**amity**

Light tensed slightly, and then just as quickly relaxed again. He tilted his head just enough to meet Lawliet's gaze through his hair. 'That's what I was for you as well, wasn't I?' he said, perfectly serene despite the raw, demoniac glow of his eyes. His smile was elfin. 'The only one who didn't ever expect you to be something you weren't.'

Lawliet bit at his thumb. 'I do believe, according to the definitions we've just proposed, that we might have been friends,' he said, like it was a revelation. His dark eyes were wide.

Light blinked, and in that split second his vermilion eyes seemed to dull slightly, so that when he raised his head a moment later his expression had become perfectly guarded. 'That would mean that we're friends now, wouldn't it?' he said, his tone ever so light and careful, like a courier broaching the news of a tragic death to a deceased's dearly-devoted lover.

Lawliet looked down, and shadows collected deep and dark in his eyesockets. 'Friends,' he murmured, like he was trying the word out on his tongue. He tilted his head, and his dark bangs fell into his face, obscuring his expression. A little louder, he said: 'Kira-kun is my friend.'

'Yes,' said Light, a beatific smile materializing on his lips. 'And Lawliet-kun is my friend, as well.'

Lawliet looked up at him with wide-open black eyes. 'It sounds like a lie, when we say it like that,' he said, and it was the same tone he'd used just before his death, red lights flashing all around them and the message 'All data deleted' whiting out all the screens.

Light's lips curled just as they had then, smug and triumphant. 'You claimed before that I was your only friend.'

'Yes,' agreed Lawliet, and his stare was flat and incisive, his voice leaden like the sound of his body hitting the floor. 'But that was a lie.'

Light gave an airy laugh, red eyes glinting. 'Well, even if it were true, we'd certainly be the last to know, wouldn't we?' He made a vague gesture with his hands, the motion half amusement and half resignation, his tone all irony. 'Given that you had nothing at all to compare it to, and all I had was an unhelpful invisible stalker.'

'Oi!' protested Ryuk, but the force of his chagrin was dampened by his grin. 'You could see me, y'know!'

Light tucked his hands into his pockets, glancing at the Shinigami from the corner of his luminous eyes. 'You don't protest 'unhelpful' or 'stalker,' but you protest 'invisible'?'

'Yeah,' Ryuk grinned.

Light stared at him dispassionately, before turning his attention back to Lawliet, ignoring the Death God. 'Well,' he said, meeting dark eyes with an uncanny smile, 'friends hug, right?'

Lawliet's thumb rubbed over his lip. 'I assume that's the case.'

For a moment Light was completely still. Then he lunged forward, enclosing Lawliet in his arms, pulling the other flush to his chest and tucking his face into Lawliet's dark hair.

Lawliet remained stiff and frozen, eyes wide. Light made no indication of letting go.

Slowly, slowly, Lawliet lifted a pale hand to rest lightly against Light's shoulder blade; the movement was hesitant and disjointed, almost possessing of a lifeless quality, like an automaton or a marionette. Light gripped him tighter.

Lawliet proceeded to pat Light awkwardly on the back, the action uncertain and unfeeling, and Light proceeded to laugh coldly in his ear, the sound completely, utterly empty.


	32. chapter xlix: concurrence

**concurrence**

'That felt like a lie,' remarked Lawliet, after Light had released him and taken a step back, standing there with his chin tilted down and bangs hiding his face.

Light straightened his head just enough for his crimson eyes to glint through his hair. His lips curled sardonically. 'It did,' he agreed.

Lawliet tilted his head, thumb rubbing over his lower lip. 'Maybe we're not friends after all?'

Light shrugged, the movement offhand and elegant. Turning gracefully on his heel, he started to walk in the direction they'd been heading earlier, even as he recited: 'Friend: 'a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.' He shook his head slightly, musing: 'Affection…?'

'Affection: 'a gentle feeling of fondness or liking,'' recalled Lawliet, staring thoughtfully skywards as he fell into step beside Light, the nail of his thumb caught between his teeth.

'But 'fondness' is just 'affection or liking for someone or something,' right?' said Light, exasperation tinging his voice.

'And 'liking,' I believe, is 'a feeling of fondness,'' Lawliet agreed.

Ryuk was laughing at them.

Light sighed and shook his head, bangs brushing boyishly across his face. He said distastefully: 'This is going in meaningless circles.'

Lawliet looked over at him with his childlike gaze, his dark eyes wide, round, and lucid with an eternal wonderment. 'I don't think I understand what friendship is,' he confessed, biting his thumb.

'Neither do I,' admitted Light. He looked over at Lawliet phlegmatically. 'I feel more comfortable thinking of you as an opponent,' he said, and his demeanor was almost somber.

Lawliet smiled behind his thumb. 'Likewise.'

Light closed his eyes, making a flippant gesture with his hands. 'That's that, then,' he said, and tucked his hands back in his pockets. 'That debate successfully killed some time.' He opened his blood-red eyes, gaze sweeping across the gray world spread dead and rotting ahead of them.

He turned his intent stare on the cackling figure of the Shinigami flapping at his side.

'So Ryuk,' said Light, insidious and impatient, 'are we almost there yet?'

And when Ryuk's only answer was more laughter, Lawliet, raising a hand slightly, added pettishly: 'I'd like to know that, too.'


	33. chapter l: dread

**dread**

The realm grew ever darker as they walked, and a susurrus of murmurs and clacking teeth followed them as the Shinigami they passed regarded them with glowing eyes and empty-socketed stares, wondering at the dead human who had changed a world with a Death Note and gambled them out of their contentment.

He'd lost every game against them, but he'd left them with holes and aches where before there had been none, and as he passed by some of them shrank away from him, while others called out jeeringly, some laughed, and still others curled up and rocked themselves back and forth whispering names in long-dead tongues.

Lawliet gazed at them all with a childish, undisguised interest, peeking at them from around Light's shoulders, but Light walked past like they were all beneath his attention. He didn't so much as glance at them or make any indication he heard them.

Some of the Shinigami called out to Ryuk, who called cheerfully back and laughed when they told him he was following the dead human like a dog.

'Apples!' he called back at them cryptically, blue lips slicing up his high cheeks from ear to ear. ' _Apples!'_

'Ryuk's always been strange,' the Shinigami murmured amongst themselves. 'That human he follows around, though…' and they would trail off, then, having no words to describe him.

'He makes me nervous,' one might admit.

'He's a joke,' might dismiss another.

'He was entertaining,' one might relent.

'Even crazier than Ryuk,' might marvel another.

Still another Shinigami might simply fall into a restless slumber.

'Wait,' said Light at one point, stopping in front of a group of three gambling Shinigami. He turned, then, and walked over to them, sitting down cross-legged in the ash and completing their circle. 'Deal me in,' he said, his glowing red eyes fixing on the mummy-wrapped, cicada-legged Shinigami with wide lips and a bone mask over his eyes. 'I want your scythe, Deridovely.'

Several minutes later he returned to where Ryuk and Lawliet were waiting, the scythe resting over his shoulder.

Lawliet was regarding him, gaze shadowy and depthless like vacant eye-sockets. Watchful and unsleeping. He pressed a thumb to his lips and said nothing.

'What's the scythe for?' Ryuk asked.

'Because I wanted it,' said Light, and continued walking.

Ryuk and Lawliet followed him.

The Realm grew ever darker as they walked, and a susurrus of murmurs and clacking teeth followed them as the Shinigami they passed regarded them with glowing eyes and empty-socketed stares, wondering at the dead human who'd killed tens of thousands with a Death Note and bore a Shinigami's scythe like he was born to it.


	34. chapter li: hesitation

**hesitation**

'Here we are!' said Ryuk, finally. His feet touched the ground and his wings folded away and disappeared. 'Cave of the Shinigami King.'

The cave was a dark, gaping mouth in the side of a looming, jagged peak that stood separate from the rest. The entrance draped with chains like a beaded curtain, and the ground was littered with the eerie pale-glow of human skulls and the sharp glittering of scattered gemstones.

No sound was emanating from within.

'You don't mind if I wait outside, right?' said Ryuk, scratching at his cheek with a dark, pointed nail, his voice uncharacteristically low. ''Cause, I mean, I just saw him, and… it wasn't exactly a pleasant exchange.'

Light didn't look at him, his gaze fixed on the cave, the scythe still resting over his shoulder. He was strangely still. 'Yes, Ryuk, that's fine,' he said distantly, and there was something in his distrait voice, his unremitting but muzzy gaze, his too-conscientiously relaxed poise, that made him seem oddly indistinct and unsteady.

He did not move to take even a single step towards the cave entrance.

'Huh?' Ryuk asked, his red and yellow eyes staring vaguely in Light's direction. 'You having second thoughts now?' He was grinning. 'That's not like you, Light.'

Light tilted his head down, bangs falling over his eyes. 'Ryuk?' he said softly.

'Yeah?' Ryuk asked.

'Was it entertaining?'

Ryuk's grin was as vague as his gaze. 'Huh?'

'The time I spent in The Cell,' Light clarified, not looking up. His voice was still soft. 'Was it entertaining to the very end?'

'Yeah,' Ryuk grinned. 'Why?'

Light finally lifted his head, looking over at the Shinigami with dimly-glowing eyes. 'I'm just surprised, looking back, that you took so long to kill me after I'd been incarcerated.' He smiled faintly. 'There wasn't much to watch, after all.'

Ryuk was grinning at him. _'_ I'd never watched anyone go insane like that before. It was interesting.' A breathy chuckle made its way past his jack-o'-lantern teeth. 'You never fail not to disappoint, Light.'

Light's eyelids lowered slightly, his smile languid and gentle. 'I'm glad you enjoyed it, Ryuk,' he said softly. He averted his eyes, as if somehow shy, and blinked slowly at the ground, eyelashes fluttering like lightly-falling ash. 'Do you think Near and the others enjoyed it just as much?'

Ryuk was still grinning. 'Ah, no,' he said, his tone settled comfortably somewhere between bewilderment and delight. 'They were interesting to watch, too. They seemed kinda upset by it, actually.' Schadenfreude made its home in his laugh. 'I thought they'd be happier to see you suffer, considering how much pain you put them through!'

Light blinked slowly at the ground again, still smiling gently. 'I see,' he said softly.

Ryuk's emaciated body shook with the force of his rasping laughter. 'Humans are never really satisfied with anything, are they?' he cackled.

The question seemed to rouse Light. Lifting his gaze, he blinked slowly, like someone just waking up, and as his eyes finally focused he turned his head to look questioningly, almost beseechingly over at Lawliet.

Slouching there with his hands tucked deep into his pockets, Lawliet stared back at Light with wide, hellish eyes, and then after a moment shrugged his bony shoulders. 'Not really,' he answered.

For some reason that made Ryuk laugh harder.


	35. chapter lii: magnanimity

**magnanimity**

Amid Ryuk's hacking cackles, Light murmured, almost inaudibly: 'So does that mean you'll come with me, Lawliet-kun?' His chin was tilted down, darkness-desaturated hair concealing closed eyes.

'Afraid of the dark, Light-kun?' Lawliet murmured back, his irises a deep and shadowy black, sclera white and glowing.

Light smiled faintly. 'Of dying, actually.'

Lawliet looked away, the nail of his thumb running along his wan lips. 'Death is a rather ironic thing for the dead to be afraid of,' he remarked. 'Even more so since I, too, share the same fear.'

Light opened his eyes. Their red glow luminesced through the sawtooth gaps in his death-gray bangs. 'I thought you would,' he said complacently. He lifted his head, then, meeting Lawliet's gaze and smiling. 'Shall we do this together, then?'

Lawliet's thumb pushed his lips to the side, his eyes dark and hadean. 'I think doing so would be in both our best interests,' he conceded.

'Huh?' Ryuk asked, his vicious laughter finally quelled. He was gazing ambiguously between them and grinning.

Light closed his eyes and shook his head, hair sweeping across his face. 'A God of Death wouldn't understand,' he said. He opened his infernal eyes and stepped forward, lifting the scythe from his shoulder. He swung it a few times, the long, curved bone-blade singing through the darkness, before he turned and walked over to the Shinigami.

'Here, Ryuk,' he said, holding out the scythe like he used to hold out apples. 'You can hold onto this for me.'


	36. chapter liii: pique

**pique  
**

After an unusually long moment of thought Ryuk reached out with a dark, clawed hand, the silver rings on his fingers glinting as he grasped the long handle of bone. 'So how're ya gonna trick the Shinigami King, Light?' he inquired with a rictal grin, hefting the scythe over one of his broad shoulders.

Light shook his head slightly. 'We don't plan on tricking the Shinigami King, Ryuk.'

'Huh?' Ryuk said, grin frozen in place. 'Then whaddya wanna see him for?'

Light smiled easily. 'We want to make a deal with him.'

'A deal?' Ryuk asked. 'What kinda deal?'

Light glanced over at Lawliet, and his smile gained an sinister edge, sharpened like an executioner's blade. 'Have you figured it out yet, L?'

Lawliet slowly lowered his thumb from his lips. His dark, feathery bangs drifted into his face as he tilted his head, staring at Light with flat black eyes. 'Our return to the human world, in exchange for us finding and returning all the Death Notes.'

Light's laugh was soft. 'Your deductive skills really are impressive, Lawliet,' he said, and his eyes glowed a dim, bloody red in the gloom. 'I'd expect nothing less of you.'

Lawliet stared at him unblinkingly. 'Thanks,' he said.

Light's gaze was chthonian, but the smile he sent Lawliet was celestial.


	37. chapter liv: hunger

**hunger**

Turning, Light started walking towards the entrance of the cave. He moved with a predatory confidence that, with each step, seemed to soften slightly, till at last he disclosed nothing but a relaxed, fluid, innocuous gracefulness. Over his shoulder, he called gently: 'Let's go, then, L.'

'You're a monster, Kira-kun,' Lawliet murmured, but followed after him anyway, falling into step beside him as they pushed through the clinking chains and entered the cave of the Shinigami King.

Behind them the sound of Ryuk's harsh laughter echoed off the walls like the strangled ends of death-screams, and concealed in the inky darkness their grins emerged like demons set free.

* * *

 **end.  
**


	38. teaser: monsters

**an:** Evil teaser to the sequel that may or may not actually eventually exist. It's still unclear whether or not I'll get around to writing it.

Which of course makes this teaser extra evil, even by teasers' distressingly immoral standards, but I wanted to post it anyway.

Just 'cause, y'know, on the off-chance I'm killed in some freak accident tomorrow from having my name written in a Death Note, this way I'll at least die with one less unrealized possibility for me to regret.

* * *

 **rebirth**

He gasped, lungs aching for air like he'd just been drowning, and immediately started hacking up dirt. It was in his esophagus, in his nose, in his mouth, covering his tongue and crusting his eyes. He scrabbled desperately to his hands and knees, coughing and spitting, eyes clenched shut and watering.

He sat there breathing hard, air moving clean and cold through his lungs. There was still dirt coating his tongue, but he was no longer choking on it.

"Kira-kun?" the voice was soft and inodorous, not like the wind that dragged chilly fingers threateningly over his skin and inundated him with scents of rain and soil and something floral and rotting; roses, carnations, stargazer lilies. Funeral flowers.

He turned his head, opened his eyes, saw Lawliet crouched there like a monster in the moonlight, all bent limbs and unnatural contrasts, pale skin and pale clothes and dark hair and dark eyes and dark shadows beneath them even though he'd just been dead, and behind him were rows upon rows of gravestones bleached white as bones and draping long, black shadows over the silver grass like the trains of mourning dresses, and far above them the sky was a soft, velvety gray-black, matte and slimy like the skin of a manta ray, besetted with glittering studs of stars that looked frigid and painful to the touch, like tears of frozen nitrogen, suspended there, hanging in space, ready to fall and impale him like so many needles at the slightest touch and he could have laughed if he wasn't still struggling just to breathe.

But he managed to rasp out, "I was right," and reach out a trembling, silhouetted hand towards the gelid sparks of light. "The stars _are_ cold."

He cracked a painful grin, his skin too cold and too stiff, his lips too dry, but it was nothing he hadn't felt before and he grinned wider and welcomed the uncomfortable sensations that told him he was alive, because he'd _won_. "They were wrong when they told me that stars didn't exist."

* * *

 **tbc?**

* * *

 **an:** In case you didn't read _ink_ and are wondering about the ending: by the end of _ink_ Light had gone completely insane and started hallucinating very vividly, and that last line about stars is a reference to one of those scenes, in which Shinigami-like monsters tormented him both psychologically and physically. (of course, they were really just figments of his mind and he was actually physically harming _himself_ , but he did not and could not perceive that; to him the monsters were very real)

Explanation for the change depicted here: Light was not insane when he was dead - in this story and in _ash -_ because he was dead and was only a stubborn manifestation of memories and desires coalesced as a 'soul' or whatever. having no corporeal body, he had no brain with which to have been physiologically insane. but having been dead is not a magical healing elixir, so once he's alive again and has a corporeal brain the insanity returns because of the connections that developed/eroded between the synapses and everything. because science. obviously.

And also I just really enjoy writing characters who are insane.

So if I ever is able to actually write the sequel, you may rest assured that everyone and everything will be unduly messed up.


End file.
